Gender Differences in Career Planning among Young Adults

Gender equality is the state where both men and women get equal opportunities, rights and status. Our exploratory research focuses on the situation in Armenia, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia. Unlike usual researches where traditionally countries from the West and East of Europe are investigated our exploratory research focuses on countries from the Eastern Block. These countries support gender equality in the labor market; however, they contribute in strengthening the traditional family model with the length of parental leave. Based on our exploratory research we can identify patterns showing that the opinion of society about the distribution of gender roles has undergone changes in these post-socialist countries. In general, there is a common understanding about equal rights of men and women. But still, in all investigated countries, there are "traditionally" thinking people, who tend to keep the strict role-distribution of gender in child upbringing, participation of women in political and managerial matters. The results of our exploratory research can guide the human resource departments and organizations who deal with labor market in their professional orientation activities among younger generation and be a base for a future large sample research to prove the identified patterns highlighted after analyzing the sample used by the authors.